Note 4 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

In such an atmosphere, even on the ecclesiastical side, demand for “reforms” naturally made headway; and the Council of Constance (1414–1418) was convened to enact many besides the ending of the schism.4 But the Council itself was followed by seven hundred prostitutes;5 and its relation to the intellectual life was defined by its bringing about, on a charge of heresy, the burning of John Huss, who had come under a letter of safe-conduct from the emperor. The baseness of the act was an enduring blot on the Church; and a hundred years later, in a Germany with small goodwill to Bohemia, Luther made it one of his foremost indictments of the hierarchy. But in the interim the spirit of reform had come to nothing. Cut off from much of the force that was needed to effect any great moral revolution in the Church, the reforming movement soon fell away,6 and the Church was left to ripen for later and more drastic treatment.